12 Sep “cope, cop, cup”: A Vowel Tutorial
Open the voice memo app on your phone (if you don’t have a smart phone, grab a handheld recorder) and record yourself saying these three words: cope, cop, cup. Listen...
05 May Good, bad, best, worst… How does your accent stack up?
People with foreign accents, people without… They all ask me the same question: “What’s the WORST accent?” To start, let’s go ahead and scratch the term “worst” from our discussion. People who...
23 Mar Another Practical Lesson: “bus” vs. “buzz”
One feature of every accent I have worked with is difficulty with voicing of consonants. What is "voicing" anyway? Well, we will get to that. To start, did you know...
13 Mar Where are you REALLY from?
A few weeks ago, one of my friends had an interesting post on Facebook. She was fed up with people asking her where she was from as they were obviously...
05 Mar The Bachelor’s Juan Pablo: Top Five Features of Spanish-Accented English
Have you been watching “The Bachelor” this season? Have you ever wondered what it is about Juan Pablo’s pronunciation that makes him sound so different from a standard American English...
09 Dec “Day” or “They”: A Tutorial on How to Pronounce the “th” Sound
Say “day” and “they” out loud… Do the words sound different? If not, you have a feature of accented English that is common across people from many different language backgrounds. Each...